


On This Longest Night

by handschuhmaus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Historical, The Three Body Problem AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-10 08:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12907797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: potentially 12 + 1 --primarily Sithly quick fics tinged with hope





	On This Longest Night

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a sort of mini advent calendar of, well, not really holiday themed fic but a sort of winter darkness with a spot of hope. 
> 
> ...as might be expected I didn't really finish it up... :/

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Young Palpatine makes a few better, if difficult, choices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Maybe I'm a little young to care/maybe I'm a little old to cry/I don't know/Maybe I'm a little weak to dance/Maybe I'm a little strong to die/I don't know.../Concentrating, love and I'm hearing myself again/impersonating the smallest shadow of my original self again_ ("Eyes Wide Open" -Over the Rhine)
> 
> (note: verbal and other implied [non-sexual] abuse in this chapter)

"I've never seen such egregiously bad driving!" But the words didn't register with young Palpatine. The bricks that had fallen from the facade in the crash had, and the fact that the pedestrians looked, respectively, mean and uncomfortable. By all his experience, Cosinga was going to pay to paper over it, as he always did for himself too. The thought that he could very well have fatally injured them echoed through his head persistently, and the reckless young driver wasn't sure if that were a more welcome alternative. He'd destroyed Cosinga's speeder...

* * *

"Why do you not apply yourself in the most important classes for your future?"

It was not as if Cosinga's favor could be won by studious diligence. In fact, his eldest son had probably no way of winning it, even if he had been the father's ideal young man. His two younger sisters enjoyed his father's mercurial favor at times, but it could turn to meanness in seconds.

But it was the school's deputy headmistress speaking to him, in that righteous outrage.

"Look, have you ever felt like you just don't fit with what you were intended for?" he tries.

"Young man, such sentiments are irrelevant. You will inherit a position of political influence; you _must_ be prepared!"

* * *

A Muun named Damask asks after him and is led to a corner of the library, where the student has all manner of books stacked up beside a chair. He can see manuals of design, engineering, language, history, philosophy, and those are only the ones he can identify the purpose of.

Currently the boy is reading a book on logic...

Palpatine--who goes by that last name alone, considering that further alteration might encourage violence from Cosinga--doesn't know what a Muun would want with him. They are (apparently) mostly lawyers and bankers and such. 

The Muun, with a teasing note if the human isn't mistaken, asks "Aren't you omitting biology?"

"Are you interested in the subject, sir?" he has some knowledge of how to be relatively charming with adults. But at the same time he tugs a volume about "Poisons and Plants" from between a grammar of Middle Naboo and _Aerodynamic Principals for In-Atmosphere Vehicle Design_.

"Yes. But why are you reading so widely? Are you looking for something?"

"It's my view that if someone were attempting to be adequate as a political figure they would do well to understand how the galaxy works."

It's not what Hego Damask was expecting, even if he's not sure what exactly that is. And he spots a monograph labeled "Paradoxes of Preference" on top of the pile

The reason he just gave the Muun is one designed to sound good, not his own, exactly. It won't represent his own private victory against Cosinga if he goes into the same political games, constantly obliged to curry favor from people he'd rather not have to associate with in the first place. And the stuff has proven interesting, even if some of it is mostly grounds for debating the story he's been told of the way the galaxy works.

* * *

"The rebellious son returns," Cosinga announces sarcastically, and said son remembers, but puts aside for the moment, a dozen moments when he had strongly wished the man would just...die.

His mother has never been particularly affectionate towards her children, but his little sisters liked him, and, it turns out, mostly don't like Cosinga. 

"Do you like him?" he quietly asks Mina, the eldest daughter, referring to the young man Cosinga hopes to celebrate betrothing her to today.

"He's--he's not a bad man, I think. But it won't be happy."

"Well then--do you want to?"

"Our suitcases are packed. And Eonin's?" 

He has offered to take in his sisters. It's not exactly an ideal scenario, but he has a better place in the little flat that has never been clouded by Cosinga's presence, and at least his corner of the speederbike racing scene is populated by pretty decent people, not like the sharks, hungry for blood, that Cosinga entertains. He'll encourage Sybil to finish her education but aside from that, he doesn't have the plans Cosinga does for the two girls, for aspirational marriages. And now, thankfully, that Naboo has ruled minors over the age of 11 have a deciding say in which potential guardian they may live with, Sybil has just turned old enough to accept.

But in the here and now he sighs, "I don't know. I'm not sure he'd be allowed to choose--"

"Sybil! What are you doing?" Cosinga thunders.

"We're going to live with our older brother, Father," Mina explains in a definitive tone.

He chimes in dryly, "The law now gives Sybil that choice, and in a good third of the galaxy, Mina is not considered properly a minor." Not that the law would have helped when he was that age, considering he didn't have an alternative.

"I know! Take them, then. You and your bewitchedness, changling! Your birth ensured I'd never have a worthy child."

"Does that mean you'll allow Eonin to come with us?" he isn't prepared to care for a younger child but it'll be better than life with Cosinga, surely.

"Certainly, take the other defective changling!" Cosinga pulls out his holocomm unit and stomps towards his study, muttering under his breath that he'll have to cancel all this now. The younger boy quietly appears and walks over to them.

"Do you want to come?" he asks their mother a little reluctantly. He'll work something out even though it doesn't sound like a good idea.

"No, no, I'll stay," she answers quietly, but there is something like pride in the way she looks at him.

* * *

When Hego Damask visits his not-protege on the occasion of his twenty-fourth birthday, he finds Palpatine cooking with a boy who must look like a younger version of himself (but is probably too old to be his child), and three women around the kitchen table. The racer is talking about propulsion mechanics with the older of the remaining, busily sketching on a holopad. The younger, probably still in school, has headphones in and is intently reading the multimedia edition of a financial text. 

The young man, the racing manager and older brother, rolls his eyes at Damask, but nevertheless greets him "If you don't mind garlic and a lack of elbow room you can eat with us. Sharna is just going."

The racer does leave, hugs the little family goodbye, and Hego Damask stays for dinner, a simple meal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (there's probably a little too much of me in my Palpateen at this point...
> 
> but uh turns out people who thought I'd like college better than high school were quite right)


End file.
